Over the Threshold
by FlameOfIllumination
Summary: Buffy makes one last shot at getting things right with her and Faith. Faith realises she may have been mistaken about some things. Maybe. Warnings: Fuffy, possible bad language, fluff. final sequel to 'like honey and cigarettes& 'the lucky ones...'


'**Over The Threshold'**

**The finale of a**** three part series on Buffy and Faith, post Chosen.**

**If ****you haven't read them, you may want to read ****The lucky ones, we shine like a thousand suns****, and ****Like Honey and Cigarettes**** first.**

**Faith's POV**

She's starting to think she likes me. I see it in the way she smiles at me, at her hurt when I choose to patrol with Kennedy or Vi or even Xander. Sometimes I hate seeing so much.

I have to stay away from her.

"Faith?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going…I was thinking of patrolling…you wanna come?"

Shit. Say no Faith. Say no. bad idea.

"Okay."

Damnit.

We talk. I talk about Steve, about Mark, about Kyle. I tell her about the little tuft of hair Steve had on the back of his neck, about Mark's tattoos, about Kyle's piercing blue eyes. I don't tell her about Ronnie, about the way her hair was chopped short and spiked up, about the way she drank wine from coffee mugs.

I tell her about them and a hundred other one night stands that've mostly blurred together, leaving fading impressions like ancient photographs.

She looks hurt, and hides her feelings badly behind hostility. I feel bad for her. My heart aches. She lashes back, eventually. Tells me about Angel, emphasis on her one true love -though she says it so mechanically I wonder if she recognizes what everyone around her has.

That Angel was her first love, got the motor running so to speak, but was never for her. Too tortured, too old, too perfect. A noble vampire with a tragically evil past, a football players build and a penchant for soulful stares. Lame, in other words. Spike, now he wasn't lame. Hot, for a dead guy, with an accent a thousand times better than Angel's and a sense of style assuredly not from Anne Rice.

"He was good. Hot ride."

I choke on my laughter until it bubbles out into the night air.

"Someone's gotta teach you to dirty talk properly."

She blushes, and looks at me angrily. "Fuck you Faith."

"Sorry B. Maybe for your birthday."

I said it on reflex, a silly reply in our verbal thrust and parry but she stops and takes my arm.

"Why are you doing this?"

"What?" I shake myself out of her grasp.

"I want you."

"I know." She's vulnerable. I swore I wouldn't do this to her. She's looking at me with those hazel eyes… she's teary. Shit. What do I- I don't even know.

Her eyes harden. She's looking at me. Sympathy. Confusion. I can still read her but I don't know why …are those tears? Am I crying?  
Fucking no. No way. "Don't touch me!"

**Spike's POV**

Buffy must be used to having her men come back from the dead. That must be why she only smiles sardonically at me, and continues to read.

"Buffy…"

"Go away First. I'm trying to read."

"First? It's me Buffy. It's Spike."

She raises an eyebrow and shakes her head. "Great performance."

I can smell her. Familiar. God I want her. Can feel her pulse from across the room. It's increasing. She stands up. White shirt, tight blue jeans.

Next thing I knew I'm on the floor, world spinning, flattened by a punch I really should have guessed was coming. Despite myself, I'm laughing. The look on her face when her fist actually connected with something.

Next thing I know she's in my arms. Still pinching me, checking. Her lips are so…her everything…I may have a soul now but that doesn't mean I don't want to fuck her brains out.

So we kiss. Or I kiss her. I don't know. All I know is, just as if nothing has changed, as if my being back isn't a miracle that suggests a blow job is in order, as a follow up to our kiss I get pushed away. I almost get punched again too.

"Bloody hell love, not quite the hello I was looking for!"

She's crying. I suppress a sigh. I'm no saint, even with a soul. Hell, even when I was William I would have got sick of her crying all the time.

"Love, what's wrong?"

She wipes away her tears with the back of her hand, with a practiced movement that suggests she's used to these crying jags of hers.

_She missed me that much? Well, here I am. _

I took her hand.

"Cold hands." She muttered. Her eyes are shadowed.

"Well yeah, I'm dead. Not good for your temperature."

She winces. _What's happened to her?_ _She looked better right after she got stabbed on the Hellmouth._

"What's wrong?"

She shakes her head and finally puts down the book she'd been reading, saying, "It's complicated."

_Oh. I know complicated. Complicated is good. It leads to tearful confessions and rough sex in abandoned buildings_.

I close the door. She notices, but does nothing. That's good. It's bloody excellent in fact.

She's nervous.

"Aren't you happy to see me Buffy?"

_Wow. That was pathetic. __Grow some balls Spike._

"Summers. Glad to see you looking so happy, having averted the end of the world and all that."

Buffy smiles at that. "I'm glad you're back Spike. You just make things more complicated, that's all."

At last, she seems to realise that coming back from the dead isn't a regular o-…come to think of it, it does happen quite a bit around Buffy Summers. Anyway, she finally asks, and even looks excited.

And that's when Dawn charges in.

"Hey Buffy can I borrow- Spike?!"

"Little bit ain't so little anymore."

We're sitting on the lounge, and she's hugging me still. Before I died she was so pissed with me I could see the holier than thou expression Buffy wears plastered on her face.

Now? Well she's cuter than before. More grown up kinda cute.

Probably why Buffy bundles her off to some friends place almost instantly. Little Bit gives me this grin and I know she thinks she's being cleared so we can have sex.

I try to touch her when we're alone and she brushes me off. Damn slayer strength.

Coldly, Buffy dropped my hands. "Now what? What the bloody hell have I done now?"

"The world doesn't revolve around you Spike." Buffy retorted.

"Then what! You said you loved me, or don't you remember?"  
"You said I didn't. And you were right. I never loved you that way, and I still don't. Spike, I can be your friend, but nothing else."

"Not this again."

"Spike I'm in love with someone else!"  
"Angel, the bloody poofta."

"No!" then, more quietly, "Not Angel."

"So you found a new puppy. Doesn't matter. It comes back to you and me in the end love."

She stood up, walked away. "What's wrong with you Spike? I told you no."

I stop. Those words remind me of a time she said no…and I said yes.

"Please Buffy."

She turns around. She's crying _**again**_. Bloody hell.

"Who?"

"Faith."

I'm not sure I heard her right.

"Who?"

"Faith. The vampire slayer."

**(Buffy POV)**

I said it. I told someone. Spike, of all people. I love Faith. She left me, she ran away rather than cry in front of me and I haven't heard from her in weeks.

But I love her. I think I have from that moment she tore my shirt off and then gave me her jacket. From the first moment I wrapped myself in her scent, that smell of honey and smoke.

Or maybe I loved her from the time she kissed me, and told me I wasn't ready to kill her.

Or maybe it was from that moment she introduced herself and slipped her hand in my pocket to pull out a stake.

I guess it doesn't matter when it started. It has and I know what to do now.

"Thank you Spike."

"What the bloody hell for?" he's angry now, and hurt, pacing, making his long coat swirl. Where did he get another one of those? At least now I know he can't be wearing the jacket of a dead slayer.

"You showed me something. I love Faith."

I can say it without blushing now. It's irrefutable fact.

"And I have to prove it. I love her too much to let her push me around, let her dictate my life. She thinks she can protect me from her, or herself from life, by running, but I'm going to catch her. She thinks that if she's not around me then all of this will stop, but I won't let it. I'm going to find her."

The others want to know where I'm running to of course. So I tell them I don't where I'm going but I know I'm doing.

"Looking for Faith."

"Isn't now a weird time to try and connect with God?"

Xander, of course. I smile at him and he shrugs. "Okay, so you wanna find Faith. Why now?"

"I have to tell her something."

Willow and Kennedy sit side by side on the couch, one looking concerned, the other bored. I used to wish Willow would just dump Kennedy, but I think I'm starting to get what Will sees in the girl. She's bratty, annoying, demanding, but she has another side too.

Xander sits next to Giles, his one eye an ever present reminder of one of my mistakes.

He's looking at me seriously, although with a hint of his old high school leer. He knows. Somehow Xander always knows these things. He nods approvingly at me, and a vast wave of relief hits me. "I love her. And I have to tell her."

Giles removes his glasses immediately and begins rubbing them briskly, probably wishing he hadn't heard that. Willow gasps, and Kennedy smirks.

And despite all my resolve I'm going red. Kennedy tries to smother her laughter. Willow looks at me like I'm a mental patient and Giles coughs uncomfortably. "Well…of course you…well you can go. Not that you were looking for permission…I think I should….uh…" Giles stammers to a halt.

"Need company on your trip?" Xander offers.

"You're taking this pretty well." I said, surprised.

"I had a bet with Willow that Faith dug you back in senior year." He explained, grinning. "And you've always had a bit of a thing for her, right?"

"No! Well, yeah, but, I thought that was a slayer thing."

"It's a people thing." Kennedy piped up unhelpfully.

I looked at Willow. Of all the people in this room, her reaction was the one I was most afraid of. I knew that she'd forgiven Faith, but how far that stretched I couldn't be sure.

My best friend didn't let me down. A soft smile on her face, she teased gently, "A little slow to catch on aren't you? Copycat."

"You're okay with this?"

Willow looked thoughtful. "I can't say she's the person I would have chosen for you. But I want you to be happy. After everything that happened in Sunnydale-"

"-my disastrous dance from one loser to another?" I interjected.

Willow shook her head. "I meant the apocalypses. Apocali. And the Angel stuff. And the Riley stuff. And Spike."

"Someone say my name?"  
The vampire strolled in.

Jaws dropped around the room. I rolled my eyes.

"I got me a dramatic entrance." Said Spike, pulling his long leather coat around him.

It's a dingy place. I don't know why I'm here- I've got enough money for a motel that doesn't charge by the hour. But I'll need that cash if I don't find a job. If I don't find a place. If I don't stop moving. Buffy and I are still linked of course.

I can still feel her presence, somewhere in the back of my head. When she died…it was like the temperature went down ten degrees. Doing push ups in the prison yard I shivered in the summer like it was snowing.

They thought I'd cracked, and sent me to the hospital ward, complete with shrink.

I can still remember the questions.

"_**Are you cold?"**_

"_**Fucking yes."**_

"_**I'll turn the heater up, and get you another blanket."**_

"_**Are you still cold?"**_

"_**YES, ALRIGHT!"**_

"_**You seem to have a lot of anger…can you explain it to me?"**_

Outside, the night air is heavy. I'm in Texas, of all the stupid, redneck asshole places. All I want is a drink, and then sleep, but first I need a run. I need to stake something. The graveyard here is sleek and spacious. No tombs though, just row after row of headstones and white crosses. The vampire that accosts me pulls his hat from his grave and dusts it off before placing it back on his head and turning to fight. Just for a laugh, I ground my heel into his hat and watched his face fall.

Just for a second. Then he attacks. He's slow, and clumsy, still disorientated from digging out of his grave and I take him out, leaving his hat on the pile of ashes where he used to be.

And I turn around; with the ash still falling all around me- and Buffy enters the graveyard.

_Damn it._

She hasn't spotted me yet, but I can tell by the way she's looking around that she knows I'm here. So I run.

I forgot that movement attracts the eye, and next thing I know it's a footrace through a graveyard, and over the chain link fence. I run along a concrete path and I can hear the clicking of her heels as she runs.

I go maybe a mile before she makes up any distance on me, and her steps get louder.

The path splits, and whilst the concrete turns south and heads for the town, I go north along a dirt track.

_Can't. Can't. Can't. Can't._

Then I trip.

**Buffy POV**

She runs a lot faster than I do. It takes all my strength just to keep up with her. The carefully worded speech I was planning to make flies out of my head when I see her trip, and before I can make myself stop I'm there at her side, helping her up.

"Are you alright?"

"Five by five B. Now, if you'll excuse me-" I grab her arm.

"There's nowhere to run Faith."

"This reminds me of a dream I once had…"

"You don't get to decide what's best for us!" I sound hysterical, and Faith takes a step back.

"What us B?"

"This us. This me&you and I love you, and I'm not letting you get away from me this easily."

Faith sighed tiredly. She tried a mocking grin but it slid off her face, and she just looked at me.

"Why does everything have to be such a struggle with us?" I asked, looking into Faith's eyes. Faith shrugged.

"I love you." I said again, "I told you, and I'll keep telling you. And maybe you'll realise that saying it back doesn't mean giving in, or giving up."

Faith didn't move, didn't look at me. She just stared at the ground.

_This is not right._

A sinking feeling in my stomach.

"I…I have to go back. Please, come with me."

Faith stood motionless, staring at the ground.

I walked away.

A small voice called after me. "Buffy?"

I stopped, but didn't turn around.

"Buffy. I'm sorry."

I kept going. I could feel her eyes on me, could almost hear her breathing we were so close and yet, when she grabbed my shoulders it shocked me.

"I'm sorry…but I can't let you walk away."

Now, I don't know what she expected to happen. We sometimes discuss this moment even now and she professes surprise at my actions – says: "To be honest, I was expecting a chat. You're really into those DnM things."

It had finally all clicked together for me, what Faith was really worried about. It clicked in the end, she wants to make sure we'll still be friends.

So she ran away? Queen of the impulsive action.

I'd been waiting long enough.

_The moon is shining bright_

_The mood is feeling right_

_I'll kiss you on your neck_

_People will stare but we won't care_

_We're high above the ground_

_We're nowhere to be found_

_Empowered by adrenaline_

_Feel I've been born again_

The passengers on that flight to LAX were a mixture of amused and tolerant. The seatbelts signs went off, the flight attendants brought round drinks and two beautiful young women toasted each other with every ridiculous epithet they could think of, kissing after every mouthful.

"We're friends first, right?" Faith asked just before they landed.

Buffy nodded, eyes fond. "I thought you'd never ask. Friends first."

When the plane landed, they walked across the tarmac hand in hand, but hesitated at the door to arrivals lounge. Through the frosted glass they could see Willow, Giles and Xander waiting.

"Back to work." Faith said.

"No." Buffy corrected. "Back home. Should I carry you over the threshold?"

So here we are. What I swore to never let happen has happened. But things aren't too different. I watch crappy movies with Andrew and Dawn. I patrol with B. We stop at Mickey D's for breakfast and check out the joggers who come in for bottles of water. Spike's back, and he checks out little D whenever Buffy's not looking.

The last thing I did before I went to sleep last night?

Thanked God someone had more sense than me. I thought this would stuff everything up, but so far, it's just getting better.

**Well…that's it. the end. **

**There's a Willow/Faith/Tara story i'm a couple of thousand words into at the moment that I'm thinking of posting. Reviews would probably help me decide if I should. lol ;)**


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